Primitive Accumulation

Marx considers the origins of the relations between labour and capital.

The process in which the workers (peasants and artisans) are dispossessed of their means of production and subsistence, the process of “primitive accumulation”.

Chapter 26 – The Secret of Primitive Accumulation

Marx agues the origins cannot be found in a sum of money, perhaps saved by an industrious worker, for money can only be transformed into capital through the purchase of labour power.

Chapter 27 – The Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land

Chapter 28 – Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated since the End of the 15th Century

Chapter 29 – The Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer

Chapter 30 – Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry

Chapter 31 – The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist

“Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power” (p. 916)

Chapter 32 – The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation

Primitive accumulation is the expropriation of petty private property by capital, capitalist accumulation continues this process with the centralisation of capital and the socialisation of labour until they “become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder”